


written on your heart

by Tobiko



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff and Angst, Multi, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, just told with soul mate markings, so a lot of events will be familiar, the angst is real in this one, this is an AU of the show
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2019-05-24 10:19:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14952803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tobiko/pseuds/Tobiko
Summary: When you write on your skin, it appears on the skin of your soulmate. Seven soulmates can get a little crowded, but they'll make it work.Or try as hard as they can.





	1. Chapter 1

Traditionally it is considered bad form to let a child under 6 have access to anything but crayons due to the risk of them marking up their skin and having it show up on an unsuspecting soulmate. So when one of Julia Wicker’s soulmates (not that anyone knew at the time she had MORE than one) took a pen to their forearm and begin to scribble incoherently when Julia was just 2-years-old, her parents were disgusted.

“Perhaps it’s just an overenthused kindergartener who’s been allowed to hold a pen for the first time?”

“That’s almost worse,” Denise Wicker snapped. “A six-year-old doing that to their arm?”

Julia sniffled from where she sat next to Mackenzie on their plush sofa, not understanding a word of it, just knowing in her two-year-old mind that scribbles were naughty and she hadn’t even done them herself.

“So our child either has an imbecile for a soulmate or a soulmate who’s parents are so negligent they let their child have a pen before they were ready. Let’s just hope they clean their child up soon.”

Julia’s parents went from angry to horrified over the next few days as the markings stayed, only fading in patches. “Her soulmate hasn’t washed his arm in two days, Joseph!” Julia’s mother’s shrill voice carried through the house, causing Julia to try to hide against Mackenzie’s side.

“It’s not your fault,” Mackenzie tried to comfort Julia, but as smart as her little sister was, this was not something that she could understand.

“How can our daughter have a soulmate who doesn’t wash his arm in two days!!”

Eventually Denise took a bright red marker and wrote on Julia’s hand, “WASH YOUR CHILD!”

A few hours later the pen vanished.

. 

Hanna scrubbed Kady raw, ignoring Kady’s squeals and cries. Fucking judgmental parents.

.

Quentin’s father Ted had been a bit worried when Quentin’s arm hadn’t cleared up, but he’d just given Q a reassuring pat on his head and said, “She must be one heck of an artist.”

.

Eliot’s parents grumbled when they saw the scribbles. Soulmates. What useless nonsense.

.

Margo’s entire family had thrown a party in celebration, though they complained to anyone who would listen that it was a bit early and she wouldn’t even remember.

.

Alice was two-years-old and already knew how to hide things from her parents, with a little help from Charlie.

.

Penny’s parents didn’t notice.

.

Julia knew then to hide any scribbles that wound up on her body, and though she was still practically a baby she was able to depend on Mackenzie for help. When Mackenzie saw a pattern bloom on her little sister’s skin she would whisk Julia back to her room to cover it up, and Julia would obediently follow even though she didn’t understand the why.

It wasn’t until she was four that she saw the Mickey Mouse special on soul markings. It aired at least once a month but her parents had never shown it to her. It was the go-to kid explanation for soulmates and markings, comical but informative as Mickey and Minnie found out what they were, how to use them, proper etiquette.

“And remember kids, markers and pens leave marks but crayons and paint don’t! So be kind, and wash your hands after using your markers, use nice words, and when you’re ready say hello!” Mickey chirped, holding Minnie’s hand, matching hearts on their right wrists.

“Hello,” Julia murmured to herself, then looked down at where an errant scribble decorated her own wrist. “Hello,” she said.

.

Quentin watched the Mickey Mouse special around the same time, still a largely silent kid. Ted Coldwater hoped he understood.

. 

Margo’s parents let her watch the Sesame Street special episode. It was banned in most states because Bert and Ernie were soulmates and it explained that not all soulmates kissed (though Bert and Ernie sometimes did), but it was “too controversial” for most parents.

.

Eliot never saw any of the episodes. He learned at school, on the day he was allowed a marker.

.

Alice’s parents sat her down and tried to show her an entirely inappropriate soul mark video. Alice had started crying and her parents had foisted her on Charlie.

.

Penny didn’t learn about soulmates until he was nearly 8.

.

Kady’s mom explained when she was around five. Kady had been drawing on herself for years, and never gotten a message or anything like that. Maybe she didn’t have a soulmate.


	2. Chapter 2

Julia met Quentin their first day of kindergarten, but they didn’t find out they were soulmates until the day they were given “The Soulmate” talk and handed markers to color.

“Now, you CAN draw on your skin,” the teacher said as caps were pulled off markers and put to coloring pages. “You’re at school now and we can help you say things if you’d like. But if you’d rather just use your markers to color, we are trusting you to understand the responsibility you now have in your hands. And if you don't get a message back, remember that's okay! Not _everyone_ has a soulmate, and that doesn't mean you're not a special, amazing person!”

Julia stared at her uncapped purple marker. She’d picked it because it smelled like grapes, but now it might be the first color she put on her soulmate’s skin. Was purple okay? Her soulmate had never cared, usually they used black pen.

“Hi is spelled h-i,” she said to herself. “H-i...I-a-m-J-u-l-i-a,” she spelled very carefully on her arm.

A few tables away, Quentin Coldwater squeaked and held out his arm, purple words decorating his skin.

“Quentin?!” Julia asked, beaming ear to ear. Quentin looked at her, eyes wide with fear.

There was a mad scramble, exclamations of “this has never happened before!”, and Julia and Quentin were given a few minutes to talk to each other.

“I didn’t think you’d be the kind of person to scribble all over yourself!” Julia giggled.

Quentin shook his head, still looking bewildered. “I never- I haven’t held a marker or pen til today.”

“But the pen-"

“That wasn’t you?”

Julia shook her head.

Suddenly more words were appearing on both Julia and Quentin’s arms.

“Hey I’m Eliot.”

“Another...” the staff member who was with them trailed off.

Stars started decorating their arms and in huge letters the word MARGO started to form.

“What’s happening?” Quentin asked.

Julia felt her heart skip uncomfortably at the look on Quentin’s face and she reached out to take his hand.

“It’s okay, Q.”

Quentin looked at their joined hands. “...okay.” He said, smiling softly.

Quentin’s and Julia’s parents were called in for an emergency meeting. Their school had never experienced something like this before, soulmates in the same class. They’d had one or two cluster soulmates in the past but never with two in the same place. Clusters were difficult because there was almost always one person available to write something and the children were eternally distracted. A cluster with two kids in physical proximity? A whole entire other bag of worms.

Julia’s mom had immediately turned her nose up at Quentin and Julia had felt an anger at her mother that she’d never felt before as she held onto Quentin’s hand and refused to let go.

Julia helped Quentin write something nice on his arm to introduce himself.

.

Eliot was shocked when the name Margo joined the first, and then a while later a third, Quentin. He’s never in his life heard of something like this.

.

Margo’s school usually waited until children were 8 before letting their kids use markers and pens, so she’d never been able to write and ask her soulmate about all the scribbles. But when a name had finally appeared she’d leapt out of her chair and ran to her teacher, thrusting her arm in her teacher’s face and demanding, “She said HELLO, I have to write back!”

Her teacher had relented and given her markers to reply. Before she could write back, another name appeared, Eliot. She grinned. A trio of soulmates! How fun! And then a fourth appeared and she was pleased as punch, because there was nothing Margo wanted more than people loving her.

.

Alice saw the names appear and she made sure her sleeve covered them thoroughly.

.

Penny scoffed at the amount of names appearing. A voice in his head chuckled and said, “Interesting.”

.

Kady could hardly believe it when four names appeared on her arm. She showed her mom, but her mom was out of it. 

One of her Mom’s coworkers saw her arm and laughed, “Multiple partners? Take after your ma, huh?”

Kady felt suddenly anxious. She stared at her arm and didn’t know if she wanted to write her name back.


	3. Chapter 3

Julia’s parents started looking for a way to break a soul bond.

She didn’t know immediately that’s what they were doing as they took her to doctors and psychiatrists and soulmate specialists. The looks of abject horror on each consecutive professional clued her in. 

Julia wanted to tear her parents apart with her own bare hands. How dare they try to take what was hers, what had always been hers with no influence from them? How dare they try to take away the people that would _love_ her?

She had hardened to them, then. Even at a young age she knew that doing such a thing was beyond cruelty. She would eavesdrop to keep one step ahead of them, do her own research with books nearly half her size.

“Our daughter can’t be a _whore_ , Joseph,” Denise railed, her disgust with her daughter permeating their household like smog. “No dignified person  _has_ more than one soulmate.”

Julia would prove them wrong. She would get straight As, she would be popular and kind and smart, she would be the MOST DIGNIFIED person they’d ever met in their life and she would do it being loved by three people who she couldn’t imagine being without.

.

Julia and Quentin became inseparable. They spent hours sitting and talking and writing to Eliot and Margo. They worked out a system, left and right forearm for Margo and Julia, upper arms for El and Quentin. It worked because Margo wrote the most out of all of them, drawings and words and questions. She and Eliot would team up on some days and Quentin and Julia would go home with entire sleeves of art on their left arms.

It was almost a year before Kady finally wrote. It was shocking, rocked their system, but Kady said she was the scribbler and Julia was happy to welcome her into their little gang.

When Kady made her presence known they’d scrambled to find where to put her but she picked herself, choosing her right thigh. It meant that a lot of her messages went unread for the boys until after school, but Margo and Julia started wearing more skirts and shorts so they could keep in contact. It led to some awkward explanations when a teacher would look over to see Quentin reading Julia’s thigh.

Quentin suggested color coding but that didn’t catch on until later.

Quentin and Julia lamented that they knew so little about their soulmates other than each other. There was only so much they could write. 

Margo was from Los Angeles. She had a big family so it was hard for her to get the attention she craved sometimes. She wanted to be an actress or the president. When Julia introduced them all to Fillory and Further she spent hours drawing Fillory things on their arms.

Eliot lived on a farm. He didn’t go into more detail than that, and that was okay. He got picked on a lot, but he didn’t talk about it really. They could infer when things were happening by the way that Eliot _wouldn't_  talk. He apologized to Quentin for not being honest about Q’s gender with anyone he knew. Quentin tried to make sure El knew that was okay.

Kady lived in New York City, which was kind of cool because it was so close to where Quentin and Julia lived. She liked singing and dancing. She hated bullies. She was vague about her home life, and like with Eliot no one pried.

Julia wasn’t as determined to hide her family, and spoke about her hatred of her parents openly. Pretty soon it was a meme between them all that if anything bad happened in any of their lives, “Fuck Denise” showed up in various scripts across her skin. It filled her with righteous glee. The first time her mom had seen it she’d been furious, grabbing Julia and shaking her and calling her a disgrace.

Julia had grinned up at her, but had cried privately in her room. Her soulmates had offered their different kinds of comfort.

The one Julia DID know by heart was Quentin. She spent as much time as she could with him, every school day constantly in his company, weekends a bit more tricky with her parents, but as soon as she could walk herself to a bus stop she’s over at his house then, too. She knew about his likes and dislikes, his habits, his vices. She knew about his parents. They hadn't been soulmates and had divorced when he was only 8. She knew about his sadness, the way he shrank into himself sometimes, his busy brain looping up into knots. She knew how to help, how to make him smile, how to make him return like a flower blooming in the sun. Julia knew Quentin, every inch of him, and she was so happy that he was her soulmate and that she was lucky enough to get to keep him.

One day she hoped she will know them _all_ so well, but secretly she though she would never know or love them the way she did Q.


	4. Chapter 4

When they were ten Julia and Quentin told El, Margo, and Kady about an upcoming school fair and how they were going to be in a talent show. Margo and Eliot decided it was only fitting that they have awesome art on their faces, and with the okay from Kady, El and Margo began to draw on their faces a design for the ages.

Almost in sync, two new handwritings showed up. Black marker thick on both hands writing, “STOP THAT RIGHT NOW.” Blue pen written in Margo’s section of arm, “Please please stop.”

There was a lot of frenzied activity after that, and Julia and Q skipped the talent show as they scribbled line upon line on their arms and legs, trying to figure out who these two new people were.

The black marker informed them his name was Abe Lincoln.

The blue pen did not say another word.

They all wanted answers. Margo proposed writing on their faces and necks to force them to talk.

It was Julia who said, no, wait. Nearly four years and neither of the mystery people had written once that they knew of. There had to be a reason for that. Scared, shy, unable to do so because of family or community or stigma, there was a reason.

“They’re our soulmates,” Julia wrote earnestly on her section of arm, Quentin nodding beside her. “We have to _help_ them, not hurt them.”

The others begrudgingly agreed.

It was decided no more face writing to respect their soulmate cryptids, and they organized a color coded system because if there really were seven of them there just wasn’t enough space to go around. And even if they recognized each other’s handwriting without even trying, black on black on black would get confusing, eventually.

Julia was purple. The first one of them to write her name, it was to honor that long ago memory of purple marker on skin.

Kady was black. They knew money was tight for her, though not specifically why, so black would be easiest for her to get. None of them wrote that (though it was known by all) and they told her it fit her personality, which was true.

Margo chose red. She wanted her writing to stick out bright and bold.

Eliot chose gold, to the dismay of his soulmates. It would be hard as heck to get gold pens by the ton, but he insisted that elegance was worth the cost. It fit, really.

Quentin chose green. When Julia asked him why he had shrugged and said, “Because she’s blue,” tapping his forearm where one of their mystery mates had appeared. They didn’t know for sure it was a girl, but they all were pretty sure.

Eventually the message was conveyed that the mystery girl color was blue.

The mystery boy (again, an educated-guess-meeting-gut-feeling) was assigned orange, but when he popped up he refused to follow any sort of pattern and used black. His writing was distinct enough from Kady’s that it didn’t really matter, and he only popped up a couple times a year.

The girl wrote only twice more between age 10 and 20.

Both times, she wrote in blue.

.

Life can be strange when you have seven people all linked to one another. They couldn’t read each other’s minds or feel each other’s emotions, and when one of them decided not to write there was really _no way_ to know what was going on with them. There was still power in being able to write love and support on the skin of those who they loved.

Julia especially loved writing little self-motivating phrases, personalized love notes, and comfort in flowing purple. She was used to cheering up Quentin, and started to become very good at saying something small but meaningful that stuck.

She wished she could see them all in person. But none of them had offered their last names. They weren’t ready for that big a step.

Though Abe had finally admitted to his name being Penny.

Julia pictured it sometimes, sitting with all of them. Curled around Quentin, nestled between Kady and Margo and El. Penny and mystery girl, too. She didn’t know what any of them looked like. They were vague blurs, usually fuzzed with the colors of their pens. But they were there, they were together, and they were hers.

Someday they’d be ready. Until then, they’d still have each other.

.

Margo was ready to tell everyone her last name by their second day of contact. She waited when she realized no one else was going to be the first. It was the first time in her life she exhibited patience.

.

Quentin wanted to meet the others more than anything, but on his skin he could pretend to be something else, not the depressed mess he was. If they met him, would they be ashamed?

.

Eliot didn’t want his soulmates to know where he came from, the kind of people he came from. He wanted more than anything to not be a Waugh. Sometimes he pretended that the people who wrote on his skin were his real family.

Maybe that was true.

.

Kady would never tell her soulmates where she came from. _Never_.

.

Penny didn’t think he’d live long enough to meet his soulmates. That just seemed the way his life was bound to go.

.

Alice didn’t _need_ soulmates.


	5. Chapter 5

Confusion really set in around the time that Julia turned 13. She realized with growing surprise that she was finding other boys and girls attractive, but not Quentin.

Quentin was her soulmate. She knew that in her bones, in her breath, but she couldn’t imagine making out with him or sleeping with him. She wondered if she was broken in some way.

She couldn’t talk about it with anyone in her cluster because Quentin would see. She researched and read countless journals, and finally decided he must be a platonic soulmate. There wasn’t as much documentation on those, and there were multiple articles calling their very nature into question, but reputable sources all agreed they both existed and were natural. They even, according to many, blurred the lines when it came to sexuality and romance, but were “consistent in one aspect, an undying devotion and love”.

Well, that sounded right.

When Quentin was near Julia, all she felt was safe and loved. All she wanted was to be close to him, always, to have him in arms reach so she could put out a hand, entwine their fingers, and never let go. She wanted to hug him, kiss his cheeks, pet his hair, make him smile.

She just hoped and prayed that Quentin felt the same.

.

They had developed codes and memes at an early age, but it was around middle school when they made a very specific code: the Only One Person Read This code.

It started small. One day El was talking to Margo about something related to Quentin’s birthday and he didn’t want Quentin to read. 

“THIS IS A BAMBI AND SWAYZE ONLY CHAT!” He scrawled on their skin. They had all laughed about it but without even talking about it they all averted their eyes. They had no true privacy from each other, when they wrote on their skin, so they had to give each other that. As they all discovered that none of them had looked despite their ability to do so, they started to work out a system.

They started to use nicknames when they needed to have a private conversation.  Bambi for Margo, Swayze for Eliot, Jane and Martin for Julia and Quentin. Kady was the hardest, but they eventually settled on Ripley, homage to the tough woman from the Alien movies to indicate how tough Kady was.

If someone used one of the nicknames, everyone else looked away. It worked on trust and love, and they all respected it. They started it young enough that it became habit even through snoopy teenage years.

.

Soulmate marks were hotly debated around the world and there were many theories about where they came from. Old magic that had long since died, gifts from God (or gods), some sort of scientific convergent evolution. There were soulmate sciences, soulmate religions, soulmate superstitions. But the truth was, not a single person knew.

Often, it was just called magic.

Eliot found out about other sorts of magic long before his soulmates did, the day he killed Logan Kinear with a single thought.

Logan had beaten him up that day at school and Eliot had nursed his bruises and scribbled a little heart on his wrist before going to the convenience store to buy a fistful of chocolate bars. His soulmates sent him hearts in return, a few kind words, something at once biting and loving from Margo. He smiled as he looked down at his arm, glad that they didn’t ask, grateful that bruises didn’t make the transfer.

He froze when he saw Logan, at once terrified at the prospect of getting another beating and angry that his classmate dared to show his face less than 2 hours after giving Eliot a black eye that not a soul he knew in person cared to ask him about.

_That bus should hit him._

WHAM.

Logan Kinear’s body went arcing through the air and Eliot’s nose burst a vessel and bled all over his hand and the chocolate bar he’d been eating.

He ran.

Terrified, trembling fingers pulled out his golden pen and he wrote on his arm “I did something”. And then he stopped.

How to tell them? How to explain that he had just killed someone? Would they believe him? Would they understand?

Would they still love him?

The questions started.

“Are you okay?”

“What happened?”

“What did you do?”

“El?”

He closed his eyes, bit back a sob as he wiped at his nose and streaked their words with blood.

“Don’t hate me,” was all he wrote back.


	6. Chapter 6

They tried electronic communication, eventually.

Not Facebook. Again, too much information, a fear that seeing each other’s faces or knowing each other’s families and friends might change something, shift something when they weren’t ready for that.

They used AIM, old and clunky as it was, then a messenger app on their phones. Kady didn’t have a smart phone so she didn’t participate there. Eliot saved up for months to get a smart phone and simple plan and never used it in the view of any of his bullies. The three who used electronic communication most were Julia, Margo, and Quentin.

It wasn’t the same. It felt strange. They could say more, so much more, but it wasn’t what they were used to.

It just didn't replicate the feeling of Margo writing on her arm “I’M GOING CRAZY”, El crossing out the “going” and adding “amazing” to the end of the sentence, Kady coloring in the “o” and “a”, Julia giving little words of encouragement, Quentin quoting Fillory and Further up all the way across palms and fingers.

They abandoned electronic communication after a while.

.

Around high school, Kady started going quiet for long periods of time.

The first time Kady didn’t write for a few weeks straight they all worried. Since she had introduced herself, she had gone dark a week, a week and a half tops. Suddenly she was gone two, three weeks, a month. She would never tell them why, or what her weeks had been like. She started talking so much less, and it scared them.

But there was nothing they could do, just send her love.

One night Quentin and Julia were studying at his house when he spilled water on himself and went to change his shirt. He pulled off his shirt and abruptly there was a squeak of dismay.

“Why does it say “cumslut” on my chest??”

Julia whipped around. Quentin was holding his wet shirt, looking down at his chest in dismay. It was fresh, whatever it was. As Julia watched the writing smudged, as if someone was trying to wipe it off, but only faded slightly. Probably permanent marker.

Julia put her hand on her own chest. After a second she tugged off her own t-shirt, to a chirp of, “Julia!” from Quentin. Of course it was on Julia, too, but it was as if she’d had to double check to make sure. The word was written between her bra straps, nestled between her boobs. Quentin was looking away from her very carefully.  

“I have it, too,” Julia said, dumbfounded.

“I-I figured you would, but why did you-“

“It doesn’t seem real,” Julia said.

Quentin was quiet for a second, then he met her eyes and nodded.

They sent out an SOS after they’d both pulled on shirts, “f t chest, color check in – Q and J”.  They’d come up with the code “f t” to stand for “fake” or “foreign text”, because Eliot tended to have bullies that wrote on his arms to try to get a rise out of his soulmates and sometimes Margo’s siblings would try and tease her by writing something silly on her arm or hand. Color check-in was simple, a sound off for everyone who wrote to use their signature colors to write something. Mystery girl and Penny usually didn’t check in, though sometimes Penny would do the honors.

There was a few minutes of waiting.

First, Margo wrote in, a very thick, “What the fuck - Margo” in red.

“Not me - Eliot,” Eliot wrote in gold. “I wish.”

“Eliot,” Julia scolded. As the minutes dragged on, Julia and Quentin cast each other anxious looks.

Kady always checked in. Even when she was off grid, she’d write a K and that was it.

“Kady,” Quentin said quietly.

Julia nodded, face tight.

“Damage control?” Margo wrote.

“Rainbow markers,” Julia wrote back.

They’d never done it on such a big scale before. Usually Margo, Q, Julia, and Kady teaming up to make an arm sleeve to hide words like FAG and TWINK written on Eliot’s arm, or quick scribbles to hide their “Fuck Denise”s or squirreled test answers.

Quentin fished in his desk for his washable markers and took off his shirt again. Julia pulled off her own. Quentin blushed and looked away again. “You can just work on me.” 

“No. I want you to write on me, too. From all of us.”

Quentin looked back at her and gave a curt nod.

The word had been more blurred by whatever scrubbing Kady had done at it but it was still there, dark against Quentin’s skin.

The first pops of color started to grow, probably Margo already hard at work. Eliot was adding more black to the words themselves to hide them, elongating them, twisting them. Julia and Quentin started working on each other and made faster progress than if they’d been alone in their rooms looking at mirrors.

Soon a colorful mosaic of color and shadow decorated each of their chests.

Julia wrote in small letters at her shoulder, “Kady the Warrior”.

They didn’t hear from Kady for another few weeks, but when they did, after saying hi, there was a small “t y”.

It never happened quite so horribly again, but every so often cruel words none of them could place decorated their skin, and out came the markers and pens.

.

Penny didn’t interact with those losers, but Kady and blue girl were the only ones he could even stand.

They didn’t notice when Penny added a small flower to the damage control.

.

Alice ignored all of their messages and didn’t check her chest. When she saw what they had done the next morning, she sighed in exasperation.


	7. Chapter 7

The consistent writers, Julia and Quentin and El and Margo, rarely went a day without writing one another. They still didn’t all know each other as well as one might think, because there was a _hell_ of a lot you could hide when you were controlling the flow of information, but they knew each other enough to love each other, _adore_ each other.

So when El and Margo went dark for almost a year, Julia and Quentin were freaked out.

Over a decade talking to each other practically _every day_ , and then messages stopped an entire week from both of them, and then were sporadic.

Julia distracted herself with James and Quentin. She and Quentin still wrote on their skin daily. Kady had been fading in and out long before Eliot and Margo’s disappearance and halfway through the year of no Eliot and Margo she disappeared too.

It was just Quentin and Julia.

Julia tried to tell herself that it was just a phase.

Quentin sank further into the depression that had lurked just around the corner in his mind for as long as Julia had known him.

She tried so hard to keep his head above water. Wrote stupid things to him when he was out of sight for even a second, cuddled and held onto him when he was there in person.

Julia knew whenever he checked into an institution, when his neat green pen turned into thick green marker.

She was secretly angry at El and Margo for ghosting, but there had to be some reason why. Something, anything, that would explain it. She knew they loved them, just knew it. It had to be _something_.

.

Eliot and Margo met at Brakebills and knew without even checking their skin that they were the right Eliot and Margo.

They were about to write Q and Julia and the rest the marvelous news when their orientation talked about soul markings, about Brakebills policies on not telling soulmates about Brakebills of they weren’t at Brakebills. Nothing about magic, nothing about the school.

“Limit your writing to them while you are at school here. It is paramount to their safety and yours.”

They almost ignored the policies anyway and went hunting through their pockets for their pens only to find them all missing. The fury hadn’t had time to set in when Dean Fogg called them both into his office and told them, “I know you are part of a cluster. Let me be perfectly clear, you are forbidden to write to your soulmates about magic, or you will be expelled.”

Margo’s eyes were dark with anger and Eliot held his head high, putting a hand on Margo’s thigh.

“This is fucking cruel.”

Dean Fogg huffed. “You could _hurt_ them.” And he explained more.

Margo and Eliot traded looks. They would _never_ hurt their soulmates. Quentin and Julia and the others meant the world to them.

They could make it three years.

.

Kady stopped writing. Marina had a hold of her. The day Marina said, “You have soulmates? You know, those are always useful for the odd smash and grab” was the last day Kady wrote on her skin.

.

Alice did not miss the words that had once covered her arms day in, day out. She did not.

Of _course_ she did not. She was just _checking_ to make sure that the writing _stayed_ off.

.

Penny was busy trying to keep the voices out of his head.

.

Quentin and Julia fought over Yale. Julia knew they had to move on, keep going, even if their soulmates were not talking to them, even if their lives were not going the way they had all talked about on their skins.

They had to. Julia couldn’t stay still. Quentin couldn’t  _afford_ to stay still. If he stopped treading water he would drown.

They fought and they left each other. Just as Julia was about to pull out a pen and write Quentin something on the elevator, the elevator stopped at the wrong floor.

.

Quentin followed a page of Fillory and Further through a door into another world. 

Without even thinking about it, Quentin looked at his arm.

In neat, familiar gold script, the words “Quentin Coldwater?” were written.

His head snapped up to see a lanky man smoking a cigarette and grinning at him.

“Eliot?”

.

Quentin was accepted into Brakebills.

Julia was not.

Wheels within wheels, Julia doesn’t go into Brakebills and-

And Quentin met their soulmates.

He was ecstatic. He could not WAIT to tell Julia about Eliot. He was sad when he found out she didn’t get into Brakebills, but she’d be okay, especially now that he knew where Eliot had been! Everything was going to be just like it used to be, with the sad part being he wouldn’t be hanging out with Julia in person for a while.

They could make it work though! They had before, for years.

Then in that first meeting, when Dean Fogg took his pills and gave him the paper to sign away his life, Fogg said not just Eliot, but “some of your other soulmates attend Brakebills as well”. Others? Margo! That would explain her silence. Maybe Kady too?

“Now, when we invited you and Julia Wicker to take the entrance exam, we knew you were soulmates. However, because she did not get in, it’s _imperative_ that you do not tell her about Brakebills. Not about your studies here, or about your other soulmates being here. In fact, we advise all students with soulmates outside of Brakebills to refrain from communicating for the years they are here.”

“What? That’s even _more_ suspicious, isn’t it? Why?”

“Because the nature of your bond means that you are connected. If you leave the connection too far open, it creates a hole in your spell work that could harm you or them, _especially_ when they are not themselves a Magician and you are so early in your training.”

“A… hole?”

Dean Fogg tented his hands. “There are sections on soulmates, marks, and novice casters in your required reading Bonds and Deep Magics. Once you have solid wards, it should be safer, but Brakebills policy is to greatly discourage if not outright forbid too much contact with outside soulmates until graduation. We have had tragedies. We will not suffer more.”

“So when Eliot stopped talking to us…”

“It was because we knew that leaks happen and leaks are _dangerous_. Soulmates are intrinsically connected, and if there are too many threads some spells follow those threads along, to adverse effects.”

“…I could hurt Julia.”

“Yes. Make her sick, make her weak, other harmful results.”

Quentin nodded.

He couldn’t tell her. Fogg said so, the orientation said so, then _El_ and _Margo_ said so.

So he didn’t write.

.

Julia knew something was wrong. She remembered like a dream a test, Quentin, his face bright with excitement like it hasn’t been in over a year. There was a scar on her arm. Brakeville? Brokebills?

She wrote Quentin, asking him if anything strange happened.

She waited. She wrote again. 

No answers for a day. For two. The third day, Julia was crying softly in her bathroom, staring at her scar, her blank skin.

Nothing decorated her skin for over a week. Not a word.

She was _alone_.

_Brakebills_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience as I worked on my Trials fic! <3


	8. Chapter 8

Quentin got a call from James, his voice furious, demanding to know why he hadn’t written to Julia, why he wasn’t answering any of Julia’s messages or any of his.

He asked if Quentin was going to Julia’s birthday.

Quentin wasn’t sure he should. But when he mentioned it to El and Margo, their eyes lit up. “Julia? Her birthday? We have to go!”

“We can’t write her, we haven’t talked to her-“

“I want to meet her,” Margo pouted. “She’s _our_ Julia. It sucks we can’t really talk to her for a few years and I miss her.”

“Yeah, I miss her, too,” Quentin said, looking down at his bare skin. 

“So let’s go,” Eliot said with a wink.

.

Julia walked through her life in a haze. She made magic with her fingertips. She couldn’t tell anyone.

She wanted to get into Brakebills. She wanted to learn, she wanted to make magic that could change the world, make people smile, make the impossible possible. Be with Quentin, and maybe he’d write her back again.

 She didn’t give a shit about her birthday. She loved James but she and James both knew they weren’t permanent, just having a lot of fun. And right now he was the only person who loved her back, so she humored his trip to the bar.

Quentin showed up, trailed by a pretty girl and a handsome boy. When Julia met his eyes she could see guilt there. She wanted to yell at him, wanted to demand to know why he had stopped writing.

“Julia!” The girl came forward. “Hi, I’m Margo!”

….Margo?

“Eliot,” the tall man said with a grin and a wave.

Eliot?

She looked at Quentin, the betrayal thick in her lungs.

Their soulmates. He had met them, and he hadn’t told her. He hadn’t shared. He hadn’t shared anything with her.

All the magic in the world. He held it. She didn’t.

She walked out of the bar.

When Quentin followed her she demanded for him to tell Brakebills they were wrong.

She belonged there, with _them_. She had to!

He was astounded she even remembered the test.

“They wouldn’t be wrong about this, Julia.”

“They HAVE TO BE, Quentin! You and Margo and Eliot are there???”

“…Penny and Kady, too,” he said with a shrug. 

The air flew from her lungs. “Kady…? And Penny?”

“Yeah. They’ve been avoiding us, though.”

“Then you must know, Quentin,” Julia said, her voice breaking. “You MUST see. They’re there. You’re there. I SHOULD be there!”

Quentin shook his head. “Julia, not all soulmates have magic. It happens all the time. It’s okay. You’ll still have us, you just- you gotta-“

“What, wait? For you all to bond and grow and learn all the secrets of literal MAGIC and then come out into the world and HONOR me with your presence?”

“That’s not fair, Julia.”

“Oh yes it is. You’re LOVING this. That you have something I don’t. I could forgive you about the magic, but THEM?? They’re OURS, not just yours!”

“If they’re ours, you can wait!” Quentin snapped. “We’ve waited all these years, Julia, you can handle a few more.”

“Oh fuck you,” Julia snarled. “I can do magic. I belong there, with all of you. I do.”

Quentin looked at her with pity.

She wanted to throttle him.

“I’ll write more. I will. We all will, okay? We’ll figure something out.”

“They’re wrong. TELL them.”

Quentin looked down at his hands.

Julia stormed back into the bar.

A guy named Pete assaulted Julia in the bathroom. She made her hands flamethrowers. He negated it immediately, but then invited her to join him and learn magic elsewhere.

She wasn’t sure. But when Julia and Pete left the washroom, Quentin, Margo, and Eliot were all gone.

Anger seethed within her.

She’d show them. They’d see. She belonged at Brakebills, too. She would prove it, and they’d all be apologizing to her.

.

Quentin was perturbed that Julia could work minor magic. The fact that most of the population couldn’t make sparks and she could, and the rest of their soulmates were at Brakebills, all of it was lining up so that it made MORE since that she would be at school with them than left behind.

But Dean Fogg had been doing this job for years, all the professors had. They couldn’t be wrong.

And Julia didn’t need EVERYTHING. She was already good at anything she’d ever tried her hands at. For once, maybe there was one thing that Quentin was better at than her. That was okay.

But maybe-

Quentin felt a prickling on his neck, and everything was just fine.

.

Margo was fucking impressed to hear that Julia had fought off a mind wipe. She’d never heard of that happening before, and it only made sense that one of her soulmates was stubborn enough to do just that.

It was kind of weird that-

Margo felt a prickling on her neck, and everything was just fine.

.

Eliot was shocked to hear about Julia being able to make sparks, but not surprised. Sometimes, the brightest normies could squeak out a little bit of power, and Julia Wicker had always been one of the brightest.

She had made big sparks, though, so-

Eliot felt a prickling on his neck, and everything was just fine.

.

Kady was not impressed with her soulmates, especially since Julia wasn’t among them when they finally met. She had spent too long under Marina’s thumb and seen the ugliness and coldness of the world to believe that soulmates were a thing that mattered, in the long run.

Hooking up with Penny was different. That had been an accident, and by the time she’d realized he was one of the mysterious soulmate “cryptids”, as the others had called him, she was in too deep.

Though why not-

Kady felt a prickling on her neck, and everything was just fine.

.

Penny had figured out that those losers (and Kady) were his soulmates very quickly because of the stupid voices in his head and Quentin’s inability to fucking ward his mind.

He was also the first to figure out that Alice was part of their cluster, too, and felt instant camaraderie with the other soulmate that had rejected the group. He kept her secret.

Pity about Julia, and-

Penny felt a prickling on his neck, and everything was just fine.

.

Alice was whip smart, but it took her a few days to realize that one of her classmates was THE Quentin on her arm, and then to find out that all the rest of them were there, too.

She didn’t tell them that she was the anonymous blue until the night they tried to talk to Charlie. 

She was disappointed to learn that Julia wasn’t at Brakebills.

So smart, and yet-

Alice felt a prickling on her neck, and everything was just fine.


End file.
